Pulp Friction

With politics in Spain finally taking what will probably be a very short summer break, let’s turn our attention to consumer affairs. A couple of weeks ago I noticed a very aggressive example of attack advertising in the press. The company behind it was Don Simón, justly famous as sellers of cheap wine that is so bad it doesn’t even justify the price of a bottle; so it gets sold in cartons. That, however, is not their only business; Don Simón are heavily involved in one of the fastest growing markets in Spain, the sale of “fresh” orange juice. As sales of other longer life juices have declined, the market for the more genuine article has boomed in recent years and competition is becoming fierce. I have to say that the quality of the juice sold by Don Simón is significantly higher than that of their wine, and I do buy it occasionally although it is not my preferred brand.

Which brings us back to the advertisement placed by Don Simón. Basically, it was an attack on their rivals Pascual, alleging that they were selling an orange juice as if it was fresh when in reality it is not. The basis of the complaint by Don Simón is that the product sold by their rivals is always stored in the cold cabinets in supermarkets even though there is actually no need for this, as it is a product that does not require constant refrigeration. Now this is not a new trick. Anyone who is familiar with a product called Sunny Delight will have come across the pioneers of the idea that getting your product into chiller cabinets convinces consumers that what they are buying is somehow “natural”. Sunny Delight was a particularly artificial, high sugar and almost orange juice free, product that had the sort of bright orange colour that you never get from the fruit itself. The scam got uncovered in the UK, as it became clear that Sunny Delight had such a low content of natural ingredients that placing it in cold cabinets was just pure marketing. It was even alleged that high consumption of the product could turn the skin of the person consuming it a colour not too different from that of the drink itself; because it was full of artificial colouring. As if that wasn't enough, its effect on fish was frankly frightening.

In Spain, Sunny Delight became bizarrely popular – when you consider the quantity of the natural fruit that the country produces – and is still to be found on sale here. The absence of the kind of consumer awareness about products that you get so much of in the UK now, makes it easier for this kind of marketing to succeed. This lack of awareness is something I put down to the fact that the Spanish have not had such a long period of highly processed industrialisation of their food. They are used to products where the origin and content of what you are consuming seems to be clearer. That is now changing as the big supermarkets and food processing companies become more powerful, although the country has still not reached the point where “dinner” is bought in a supermarket box whose contents can be placed directly in the microwave. The growth in the market for fresh orange juice that you buy off the shelf is in itself a reflection of this change in shopping and eating customs. Because the brand of orange juice that I prefer to Don Simón or any of their rivals is this one, and it’s widely available.